Sunday, March 18 4 through Thursday, March 22, 2007
Seminar begins at 7:00 pm Sunday evening and ends at 1:00 pm on Thursday.

Faculty: Jeannette Armstrong and En’owkin Centre colleagues Henry Michel, Inez Pierre, and Marlowe Sam

Location: IONS Retreat Center, Sonoma County, California
Registration is limited; we encourage early enrollment.

"To the Okanagan people, as to all peoples practicing bioregional self-sufficient economies, the realization that the total community must be engaged in order to attain sustainability comes as a result of surviving together for thousands of years."
— Jeannette Armstrong

This seminar is organized according to Native conceptions of leadership and decision making. Four Indigenous leaders will lead participants through a council process in which they will practice cooperative problem solving, consensus building, conflict resolution, and public discourse based on principles and practices that have sustained Native peoples over millennia.

Historically, the Okanagan people of what is now British Columbia invoked such a process when a choice confronted the community. The process is designed to ensure that decisions are cooperative, grounded in relationships, and take into account the needs of all members of the community — a long-term living network whose life process depends on the land. According to Okanagan wisdom keeper Jeannette Armstrong, this idea of community, which leads to sustainability, encompasses "a complex holistic view of interconnectedness that demands our responsibility to everything we are connected to."

Step-by-step, participants will move through the process of building a shared vision and language for their work together — a vision that leads to extraordinary engagement and effectiveness. The Center has discovered that the process, and the concepts behind it, are powerful catalysts in the emergence of leadership and tools for understanding how individual and community choices determine our future.

Faculty:

Jeannette Armstrong, a member of the Okanagan Nation, is executive director of the En'owkin Centre on the Penticton Indian Reserve in British Columbia. She is the author of numerous books, including novels, poetry, The Native Creative Process (in collaboration with architect Douglas Cardinal), and coeditor of We Get Our Living Like Milk from the Land. She received the Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership from Ecotrust in 2003.

Henry Michel is Secwepemc (Shuswap) and a member of the Williams Lake Indian Band. His experience includes aboriginal education development, cross-cultural and race relations education, and conflict resolution facilitation. He is currently the director of education for the Penticton Indian Band.

Inez Pierre is a member of the Okanagan Nation. She currently sits on the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keepers Council of the South Okanagan and is an elected council member of the Chief and Council of the Penticton Indian Band. Inez is a certified natural health practitioner, qualified in both nonaboriginal methods and her own cultural medicinal plants and herbs knowledge.

Marlowe Sam is a member of Colville Confederated Tribe, State of Washington. Marlowe is a traditional advisor in community conflict resolution and intercultural relations. He is experienced in the Four Societies facilitation method and has co-facilitated in a wide variety of social change organizations.

Accommodations:

The seminar will be held at a beautiful retreat center on 200 acres of rolling hills, 30 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Meals are prepared from organic, seasonal ingredients, with chicken, fish, and vegetarian options provided.

Fees include:

• Meals Saturday supper through Wednesday lunch, lodging at IONS Retreat Center Saturday through Tuesday nights
• All seminar materials
• Sierra Club book about the work of CEL: Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World, Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow, eds.

Fees: $500 for tuition, $650 for meals and accommodations, $1,150 total fees
Deposit: $200 due upon registration
Balance: $950 due by January 31, 2007